The Adventures of Elder Ben Jarvis, serving the the Mexico Guadalajara Mission, the second half of his mission.

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Tough to fill your planner here in Tuxpan

This week was pretty normal, and a little bit tough. It is a little bit tough to fill your planner here in Tuxpan, but we did have several spiritual lessons with less active members this week, and one real good one with an investigator, her name is Dora. She is an old investigator, and we decided to visit her again, I felt the spirit really strongly in the lesson, but she is just not quite ready to accept the Gospel yet, but she will be in the future. We ate with Victoria, a less active member, but she refused to let us teach her at the time.

Dad, I will try to answer all your questions even though you said I didn't have to.

The house is small. We have a bathroom, a room where we study, a room where we sleep, a kitchen, and another room, of nothing, where I sometimes do exercise. We do have a fan, which is really nice, because sometimes it get really hot.

We still eat with the members every day of the week except Monday just like in Guzman. The members feed us everyday just like in Guzman, it is just that each member has to feed us more often. We eat our big meal with the members and the other two on our own. I eat crude oatmeal and water for breakfast and cookies for dinner. We do not have gas, or hot water. We have a stove, but do not have gas, or a tank for gas. We shower with cold water, but it does not really bother me. We do have running water, but it, like I said, is not hot, and it is not recommended that you drink it, although I have done it on several occasions in the past, and nothing has happened to me as of yet.

I have been doing between 500 and 550 push-ups 2 or 3 days a week for my exercise, and the other days, I have been doing abs and a ton of wall sit. My goal is to do 1500 push-ups every week. A problem that I always have while doing push-ups is that I get really, really sweaty, and it drips onto my hands and everything, and then I am slipping around while doing the push-ups, and at that point I am usually really tired and everything as well.

I taught Sunday school but have gotten out of directing the hymns because I have been passing the sacrament.

The area is dividing by a street called Jimenez, from that side of the street, like the center of town, and down from there is the area of the other Elders, and from Jimenez and up is our area.

We went to Guzman yesterday for the broadcast, which was really great, other than that, as I am sure that you can imagine, I never feel too motivated to come back to Tuxpan after having been in Guzman,. But I felt a rather nice, loving, and warm welcome back to Guzman, the members were all talking about the rat killing story, and also about the cockroach eating video as well, I am not sure if you guys have seen that one.

30 people came to church yesterday, including 2 members of the District Presidency. I passed the sacrament for the second week in a row, and luckily did not make any errors this time, as far as I could tell. We taught the ex branch president and his wife on Saturday, and both of them came to church on Sunday as well, kind of. She came and was there for all 3 hours, and he came up to the door of the building, and then turned around and left without entering, we think it was because he saw the members of the District Presidency there, but it was definitely progress.

Juan Manuel was another less active member who came to church, he is a nice guy, is gay, but does a nice job of not acting like it around us, other than his voice, but it is not horrible or anything. And Paty Castolo was the other less active member who came to church. There were 18 people there when we started. 30 people does not sound like many, but when you are really there, it is LESS than you would think. I taught the Plan of Salvation in Sunday School, and it went alright. We have a small problem here that, like, not all of the things that we teach and are taught during Sacrament Meeting and the other classes is always true, if you know what I mean. One Sister talked yesterday, and I was frustrated because I did not understand all of her talk, but neither did Elder Cervantes, who is a Mexican. But something I did catch, more or less, is that she was confessing some of her sins during her talk, which was something that I have not really heard before in the past, but oh well, we are all here learning together, I guess I said something last week that was not true as well, so I have got to work on it as well. I heard some bad, bad news about Lola yesterday, I asked President Gonzalez, the branch president there how she was doing, and if she was coming to church, and he said that she has not been coming, and that her husband, Francisco, does not want them to come to church, I felt angry, and frustrated, and wanted to go and visit them, but obviously could not. Lola's name is Ma Dolores Lucatero Toledano, or Toledano Lucatero, I am not sure, but maybe you could find her name on Facebook or something, and her daughters name is Maria Dolores and I would assume the same last names as Lola, although I am not sure, but I would love it if you could please do all that you can to contact her, it would make me feel a lot better if you could do that, thank you very much. We just started teaching a less active member this week named Juventino who was an alcoholic, but it seems like he is doing a lot better. His circumstances are really tough. His family is the poorest that I have taught in my mission, they live with a ton of people in a small, dirty house, and there are always drunk people there wandering around, often times people who are not his family members. It is sad, but when we taught him on Saturday, he seemed really cleaned up and like he is a doing a lot better and really wants to change! We are teaching several less active members who I think will return to the church, I just think that they will probably take a little bit of time, and as you know, patience is not my biggest strength. I had a funny dream yesterday that I was dating Alice Eldredge, the girl that Bret is dating, and that her dad was Kelly Esplin, and that "We," me and Alice were playing baseball in the backyard, but it was mostly just me who was playing because she did not seem too interested in playing backyard tennis baseball.I've got to go, I'll talk with you again next week.